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    Fifty-nine in '84: Old Hoss Radbourn, Barehanded Baseball, and the Greatest Season a Pitcher Ever Had
    Unavailable
    Fifty-nine in '84: Old Hoss Radbourn, Barehanded Baseball, and the Greatest Season a Pitcher Ever Had
    Unavailable
    Fifty-nine in '84: Old Hoss Radbourn, Barehanded Baseball, and the Greatest Season a Pitcher Ever Had
    Ebook552 pages8 hours

    Fifty-nine in '84: Old Hoss Radbourn, Barehanded Baseball, and the Greatest Season a Pitcher Ever Had

    By Edward Achorn

    4/5

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    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    "First-class narrative history that can stand with everything Steven Ambrose wrote. . . . Achorn's description of the utter insanity that was barehanded baseball is vivid and alive." —Boston Globe

    “A beautifully written, meticulously researched story about a bygone baseball era that even die-hard fans will find foreign, and about a pitcher who might have been the greatest of all time.” — Joseph J. Ellis, Pulitzer prize-winning historian

    In 1884 Providence Grays pitcher Charles "Old Hoss" Radbourn won an astounding fifty-nine games—more than anyone in major-league history ever had before, or has since. He then went on to win all three games of baseball's first World Series.

    Fifty-nine in '84 tells the dramatic story not only of that amazing feat of grit but also of big-league baseball two decades after the Civil War—a brutal, bloody sport played barehanded, the profession of uneducated, hard-drinking men who thought little of cheating outrageously or maiming an opponent to win.

    Wonderfully entertaining, Fifty-nine in '84 is an indelible portrait of a legendary player and a fascinating, little-known era of the national pastime.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins
    Release dateMar 30, 2010
    ISBN9780061986192
    Unavailable
    Fifty-nine in '84: Old Hoss Radbourn, Barehanded Baseball, and the Greatest Season a Pitcher Ever Had
    Author

    Edward Achorn

    Edward Achorn, a Pulitzer Prize finalist for distinguished commentary, is the deputy editorial pages editor of the Providence Journal.

    Read more from Edward Achorn

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    Reviews for Fifty-nine in '84

    4/5

    32 ratings6 reviews

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    • 4/5
      Impressive story of early baseball. Easy reading
    • 3/5
      I am fascinated by professional sports in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. While the players may not have been as big, fast, or strong and modern athletes, they seem a thousand times more rugged and tough.

      This book focuses on a pitcher who played in the barehanded era who holds the professional baseball record for most wins in a season at an unbelievable 59. Charles Radbourn, or “Old Hoss,” played from 1880 to 1991, mostly with the Providence Grays. In 1884, pitching nearly every day, which is something I can not even fathom, he compiled his 59 wins. This book is mostly about the life and playing days of this taciturn hero, mostly forgotten by all but the most studied baseball historians.

      But the book is more than a biography. It also provides a glimpse into what baseball was like in an era where pitchers pitched frequently, you caught the ball with your bare hands, and violence and dirty tactics on the field of play were the norm not an aberration. To sit back and think what a rugged, brutal, physically demanding, and even debilitating game baseball was in the late 1800’s is simply mindboggling.

      This book is an excellent addition to baseball history. While the author does provide a bit more day to day detail than was probably needed, it is a fascinating read and one those who love baseball history should enjoy.
    • 5/5
      Being the story of Charley Radbourn's magnificent accomplishment, nearly unimaginable today, of pitching to fifty-nine wins in the 1884 season, told against a background of life in Providence, for whom he pitched, in the day, and incorporating such biographical information about Radbourn as is known. The author does a good job here of telling his story and weaving together the baseball threads with the period color taken from Providence and the league in general at that time. The only misgivings I might have about the book's readability is that it may have a bit too much baseball for the general reader and a bit too much 'not-baseball' for the fan..
    • 3/5
      It was really fun to read about how the game used to be played, but I didn't feel like this came together as a coherent story. I felt that Achorn should have focused more on Radbourn's 1884 season, and spent less time on his personal life, which he apparently had little to no information about. While this lack of facts was certainly not the author's fault, I can only read the phrase "perhaps with Carrie" at the end of every chapter so many times before I get frustrated.
    • 4/5
      Given the lack of primary-source information about Radbourn (he left no letters or writings of any kind), this is as well-done a book as one could expect. Well-written.
    • 4/5
      Unless baseball changes drastically - for instance, some MLB marketing genius finds that focus groups want six inning contests with two outs an inning - Charles "Old Hoss" Radbourn holds the safest record in the game: 59 wins (or 60; there is disagreement among the SABRtricians) pitching for the Providence Grays in 1884. And the season was then only 112 games. Radbourn started 73 and completed every one of them. He threw a total of 678-2/3 innings, struck out 441 batters and allowed a meager 104 earned runs. During the final 2½ months of the season, when he was effectively the Grays' only pitcher, his won-lost record was 35-4.Edward Achorn's nearly day-by-day chronicle of this astonishing feat turns the record book into a real life drama. Charlie Radbourn was already regarded as the best pitcher in the National League when the 1884 season started. He was also Providence's highest paid player (at $3,000, then a solid middle class income). All was not well, however. At age 28, Radbourn's arm was already suffering constant soreness and inflammation. He sat out most of Spring training, nursing the limb back to life. In the early going, he performed well, but was outshone by his partner in the two-man rotation, the flamboyant fastballer Charlie Sweeney.Tension grew between the pitchers. In the middle of July, it exploded. Enraged by real and imagined slights, Radbourn threw a tantrum on the field, was suspended by the club and faced the prospect of being blacklisted from the Major Leagues. He was on the verge of signing with the "outlaw" Union League when his rival committed a grosser outrage, arriving drunk for a game and leaving the park when he was ordered to switch positions with a relief pitcher. In the space of a week, Providence had gone from having the best rotation in baseball to the prospect of putting near-amateurs into the box. The owners seriously contemplated folding the club rather than risk losing their capital in the last half of the season.The team was saved when Radbourn agreed to a remarkable deal. In return for receiving both his own and Sweeney's pay, he would undertake all of the pitching duties, with the further condition that, if the Grays won the National League pennant, he would be freed from the reserve clause at the end of the year. Working a grueling schedule while in constant pain, often unable to lift his right arm when he got out of bed in the morning, he kept throwing until the flag was clinched, then won both games of the first World Series, against the New York Metropolitans of the American Association.Fifty-Nine in '84 relates how hard the struggle was, how often failure seemed inevitable, and how unstinting professionalism and unwavering "grit" enabled Radbourn to go on. It also gives a good sense of its subject's character: an intelligent, though poorly educated man, who loved his vocation, burned with ambition to be recognized as the best, shrugged off adulation, disliked socializing, drank more than was good for him, suffered the pangs of a seemingly hopeless (though at last requited) love, and was capable of walking onto the field day after day, limbering his reluctant arm until it could throw, and overpowering or outwitting the best hitters in the game. Radbourn was not, in many respects, a good man, but one cannot help admiring the way that he capably did his duty.Along the way, the author paints a vivid, detailed picture of baseball in the 1880's, when it was already the modern game in essentials, but still primitive, dangerous and demanding. Players wore no gloves to protect their hands; substitutions were allowed only if a player became disabled; the solitary, usually ill-trained umpire had difficulty preventing rampant cheating; pitchers could throw at batters with impunity. Many a career ended with an incapacitating injury, and no pension or disability benefits afterward. Pitchers had especially brief moments of glory, their overused arms dead after a handful of seasons. Radbourn was typical in this respect. His record after his 1884 apogee was mediocre. In 1885, he fell to 28-21, and the Grays collapsed hopelessly. They lost 33 of their last 38 games. The owners gave up. They sold all the players, and a new St. Louis franchise replaced Providence.Old Hoss soldiered on through 1891, when, after posting an 11-13 record and 4.25 ERA (very poor in that relatively low-scoring era), he retired, saying that he would not "take a $5,000 salary for $500 baseball". Unlike many of his fellow players, he had saved money and was able to live in modest affluence after leaving the game. Like many, he had contracted syphilis during his playing days. The disease carried him off at age 49.While the book is a first class sports history, the baseball material is embellished with grim comments on the crime, corruption, disease and other discomforts of the late 19th Century, wandering rather far off-topic and ignoring the fact that, compared to the recent past, conditions were clean, elegant and redolent of progress. America was a vigorous, confident land. Describing it mostly in terms of the amenities that it lacked is anachronistic.For the increasing number of readers who are fascinated by pre-modern baseball, this book is essential reading. The less fascinated may find it a bit digressive but nonetheless an engaging sidelight on our nation's less-remembered past.